Flavour First vs Game First - a comparison

[pemerton]

Though this begs the question why you cant you second wind after you are "dead". Using both gamist and narrativist thinking, there is no reason you shouldn't be able to and I dont think it is particularly a bad idea either.

From memoery, most epic PCs can in effect do this, by drawing on one of their epic destiny features. So the game has chosen to give this particular mechanic a special meaning within the context of the gameworld - it marks someone out as a fulfiller of an epic destiny.

 

[pemerton]

But I predict that this, and things like it, cause a significant enough problem for a significant enough fraction of the gaming populace that either 5e or 6e will claim to fix it.

I could be wrong.

I don't really know. As I'm sure you know, Ron Edwards has expressed the view that one obstacle to the mainstreaming of RPGs is "simulationist-by-habit" rules and play. I infer from the design of 4e that the WoTC team agree with him - as this seems the best explanation for the rebuilding of D&D as a gamist/narrativist oriented system. (Such a rebuild does not come about simply as a result of inadvertance to the issues.)

I don't talk to enough non-gamers about RPGs to have a sense of whether you or Edwards/WoTC is correct. I do find it plausible, however, that more people would enjoy a narration-type game with mechanics to set the parameters, than would enjoy a game in which somewhat arcane mathematical processes tell you what is happening in the game you are playing. However, this is only a necessary condition for the mainstreaming of RPGs, not a sufficient one.

There are consequences to the action - he got hit, he lost hit points, he used a healing surge. Granted, those consequences go away after an extended rest, but this is D&D we're talking about.

<snip>

What's most interesting for me is to take those mechanical consequences and turn it into something colourful and flavourful. That's what Lancelot's player is doing. Take away his ability to describe hit points how he likes - make them objective in the game world - and you lose that ability to give the loss of a few hit points/healing surge into a dramatic wound with thematic meaning.

Once again a very good post - thanks Lost Soul.

This Lancelot example also suggests another way of drawing the contrast between the simulationist and the narrativist approaches. In the simulationist approach, I (as a player) get to control the sort of wounds my PC takes only by controlling my PC's actions leading up to the combat - roughly, if I play cleverly then I might not be subjected to attack. Once I get into combat it is very much a case of all bets being off. Hence the emphasis, in 1st ed AD&D, of clever players avoiding combat. Many RM players also take this approach to play.

I think that the appeal of this sort of play is limited to a rather narrow section of the potential gaming public.

The narrativist approach, on the other hand, doesn't particularly penalise the player whose PC gets into combat. In fact it offers rewards, because it is at this point that the sorts of thematic/dramatic opportunities that Lost Soul is talking about emerge. And the player is able to exercise as much control over what happens to her/his PC as her imagination permits, provided that it is consistent with the parameters set by the mechanics (which ensure that everyone at the table is on the same page as far as conflict resolution is concerned).

On this approach, "good play" (in the sense of play that goes with, rather than against, the grain of the system) does not mean 1st ed AD&D clever play, but rather thematically and dramatically imaginative narration which builds upon the foundation established by the action resolution mechanics. I find it easy to believe that this is an approach to play which is likely to have a wider appeal to the potential gaming public (though not necessarily to the actual gaming public, given the pre-eminence of "simulationism by habit").

 

[Hypersmurf]

Hit points, in previous editions of D&D, represent something that has objective meaning in the game world in real time. This means, when I take a hit, I can compare it against my remaining hit points, and I can determine what it represents. Despite the apparent controversy over the naming conventions of cure spells, no future events within the game force me to decide between altering my description of the wound I took (on one hand) or claiming to still have a wound that has no game meaning (on the other).

But what game meaning does the hit point total have in 1E, or in 3E?

Let's say in 3E I normally have 100 hit points. But I've taken 4 points of Con damage, so while I'm unwounded, I have 80 hit points. But I've got a False Life cast on me, so I have 20 temporary hit points. What condition am I in?

Now I take 60 points of damage from a psionic blast. What condition am I in?

I get healed back up to 80, but then I get hit with a sword for 20. Am I wounded? I get another False Life cast on me, so I'm still down 20 from my max, but I have 20 temporary hit points as well. Am I still wounded?

-Hyp.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Let's say in 3E I normally have 100 hit points. But I've taken 4 points of Con damage, so while I'm unwounded, I have 80 hit points. But I've got a False Life cast on me, so I have 20 temporary hit points. What condition am I in?

You are unwounded, but below your peak physical condition because of the Con damage.

Now I take 60 points of damage from a psionic blast. What condition am I in?

You are injured from the psionic blast. This is probably holistic damage; there is no "wound" to see, but you are incrementally damaged all over.

I get healed back up to 80, but then I get hit with a sword for 20. Am I wounded?

Yes.

I get another False Life cast on me, so I'm still down 20 from my max, but I have 20 temporary hit points as well. Am I still wounded?

Yes (without checking the specifics of the spell). And if second wind was temporary in 4e, you would be wounded then as well.


RC

 

[Hypersmurf]

Yes (without checking the specifics of the spell). And if second wind was temporary in 4e, you would be wounded then as well.

So I'm wounded, but I'm effectively at max hit points (20 points of damage, 20 temporary hit points). Does the wound have any mechanical effect in game? I can still take 80 points of damage before keeling over, just as I could if I were unwounded but didn't have the THP. I'm not taking any penalties on attacks, defenses, movement, carrying capacity, actions per round, etc.

So isn't the choice of whether I describe the character as "Favouring the leg where the sword wound still oozes blood slowly, but pressing on with the extra vitality of the wizard's spell", or "Back in action as the wizard's spell knits the edges of the wound together, grinning despite the admonition that the healing is but a temporary thing", entirely a flavour choice?

The presence or absence of the wound on his leg when we film this scene makes no difference whatsoever to how effective he'll be in combat, nor to how long he'll last in a fight.

So if a wound that has zero mechanical effect can be present even though he's effectively at full hit points (via the THP), why can't a wound that has zero mechanical effect can be present even though he's actually at full hit points? Why does "actually at full hit points" have to mean "no blood anywhere", when "effectively at full hit points" can have blood showing?

-Hyp.

 

[Raven Crowking]

So I'm wounded, but I'm effectively at max hit points (20 points of damage, 20 temporary hit points). Does the wound have any mechanical effect in game?

Tak 80 points of damage, step into an antimagic field and find out!


RC

 

[Hypersmurf]

Tak 80 points of damage, step into an antimagic field and find out!

But that will have the same effect whether I describe False Life as temporarily knitting the wound closed (the wound heals, as if CLW had been cast, but when the spell expires the injuries reappear - for cinematics, see for example the X-Men movie when Rogue leeches Wolverine's healing factor, and his wounds reopen), or as giving extra vitality despite the wound.

Either is a reasonable flavouring for the THP, wouldn't you say?

-Hyp.

 

[Raven Crowking]

But that will have the same effect whether I describe False Life as temporarily knitting the wound closed (the wound heals, as if CLW had been cast, but when the spell expires the injuries reappear - for cinematics, see for example the X-Men movie when Rogue leeches Wolverine's healing factor, and his wounds reopen), or as giving extra vitality despite the wound.

Either is a reasonable flavouring for the THP, wouldn't you say?

-Hyp.

If (and only if) subsequent events cannot change the reasonableness of your description, sure. Especially, as in your example, because magic is involved.

But note that we are talking about a temporary fix here. If second win were temporary, the Inigo explaination would work in 4e (for me). Or are you arguing that second wind is a magical ability in 4e?

 

[Hypersmurf]

But note that we are talking about a temporary fix here. If second win were temporary, the Inigo explaination would work in 4e (for me). Or are you arguing that second wind is a magical ability in 4e?

No, I'm arguing that since someone in 3E could adventure on 1 hit point out of 80 for three weeks in the Underdark, with little chance to rest and no access to healing, and be just as effective in every way as someone on 80 out of 80 for as long as they don't lose that last hit point, the cinematic depiction of wounds is a flavour conceit, not a mechanical one.

In 3E and 4E, someone falls over when their hit points drop below a threshold... and until that threshold is reached, the number doesn't need to correlate exactly to the cinematic description, because the cinematic description has no in-game effect.

One person might argue that the 80-hit-point fighter taking a 40-damage critical from the orc's greataxe must have a deep gaping wound, because he just lost half his hit points in a single hit! Another person might argue that it's just a scratch, because the fighter still has ten times as many hit points as the average commoner. Does it matter which we pick, since either way, his combat capability is unimpaired, and whether we describe him as soldiering on through the red haze of agony from the vicious laceration, or laughing off a flesh wound, the next round will still play out identically from a mechanics perspective?

-Hyp.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Well, Raise Dead is the "ritual healing" I'm talking about. It works on any character with "dead" status.

That's obviously cool for you. In the games I have played over the decades though, we have always treated resurrections of any description as special - it's just how our group likes to play such things and how I think we'll continue to play things in 4E, even though as you say, it can be viewed as mechanically just a healing spell that can take even the most severely damaged creature/blob back to running around. As I tried to indicate before, my players are stuck in their ways and would not view dead as just a worse condition than dying.

The game is built to encourage risk-taking.

I agree and I think this is a good thing in the 4E games I am playing. The price of failure is not as great as in previous versions or other games - you can normally dust yourself up and get back into the fray without too many hinderances. In case you hadn't noticed from previous posts/threads of mine, I actually like 4E, I like a lot of the things WotC have done with the game. Our group's enjoying it although we do have a handful of quibbles here and there. What edition of D&D has not produced such quibbles within a group?

Going right back to my first post in this thread, I have just tried to present a couple of mechanics relating to hit points/damage/healing in 3E and 4E that I think produce anomalies because the mechanics don't mesh well enough with the flavour they are trying to present.

Well, then, give the players my handful of guidelines and tell them they're responsible for describing wounds to their own characters.

Fine but as I have said, the mechanics of the game don't inform the players very well how to do this - and while your guidelines work for you, they leave several ramifications that do not mesh with my group's play style. The style of game our group plays, the players more look to the mechanics and DM to define what is going on in the game. Your style of play is different (no better, no worse, just different).

Lemme hit you with a little human information processing theory. Shannon and Weaver propose a unit of information called the "bit", which is equal to the negative log, base 2, of the probability of an occurrence. If there are four equally likely events, say, notification that one of them has happened contains 2 bits of information. Experimental research into reaction times and the like tends to show that the human brain, even from an exceptionally intelligent person, is about a 2 Hz processor (2 bits per second) with a working memory of perhaps 3 bytes -- 24 bits. It's frankly pathetic, but it's coupled with a crazy mad wonderful information storage and retrieval system, which is where most of the difference comes in.

Going freeform is slow because you've got to call up possibilities for what could happen next, and they take time to consider - unless you're working with mental scripts which tend to have the next step happen with a high probability, but if you go off-script things get slow again. A way to speed it up is to predetermine certain things, giving them a probability of 1 and effectively zero processing time. But that can become too predictable, so most systems with predetermined mechanics tend to incorporate random variety and lookup tables.

Systems that go too far down that road tend to hit not only processing gap but overload working storage - and Rolemaster is a great example of this. It's a way to basically experience page faults in real life. Some of my best times hacking and slashing, though, were in an online MUD with basically a Rolemaster engine - GemStone III and IV, if anyone's heard of those. The computer does the math and I absorb the results, and it worked out pretty well. Even the stuff that happened during special GM-intervention events was scripted to some degree - and I still remember 2 times when I think I actually dumped some severely unintended behavior into a script and "broke the game" by trying to introduce a narrative. If anybody's interested, I can spill.

I think a good middle ground is a system that gives you the guidelines to predetermine your own stuff ahead of time, like how you describe wounds or what the monsters look like and how they act. That way it doesn't have to overload processing and memory by trying to simulate all things to all people but still passes on an awful lot of processing savings to the end users.

That is one solution to the problem. Or you could have a mechanic that produces a result that can be quickly interpreted because the mechanic is clean and elegant and meshes well with the flavour it is representing.

Let's say for example that hit points only represented physical damage (the wherewithal to keep fighting, turn serious damage into grazing blows, luck, divine favor and all the other stuff is handled by other mechanics - AC, Defenses etc.). You have 10 hit points and can go all the way down to -10 hit points before dying. However, at zero hp or less, injuries are quite severe (involving a tracking system like you have with the Legbreaker! - which I'll comment on below).

You take 2 hit points of damage (still have 8 left). Enough to make you bleed but you can obviously suck it up (you could take 3 more of those puppies before they start to really hurt). You keep fighting taking a few bruises but your fighting resolve is still OK and you're health is obviously good enough to keep going. You then take 12 hit points of damage. Yep, that one really hurt, takes you to -4 and you're rolling on an injury track to see what's happened. You roll so-so, broken leg but you're still conscious but obviously badly wounded. Your situation is easily interpreted from the mechanics/processes involved. The player can immediately roleplay the situation knowing exactly what state, their PC is in. They don't have to worry about conveying misinformation.

A different but I think equally valid solution to the processing gap/overload you describe. The one thing human's are very good at doing is judging a situation quickly. Give them easily interpreted variables and I think most people are OK.

And here's a special gift to Herremann: a Bugbear Legbreaker!

melee attack "Gentle Persuasion" (standard; recharge 56) +10 vs. AC, 1d12+4 damage and make a secondary attack: +10 vs. Fortitude, inflicts "Kneecapped".

Kneecapped - level 9 "disease", Endurance DC improve 19 worsen 14.

The character is cured
^
The character's speed is reduced by 1.
^ v
Initial State: The character is slowed.
^ v
The character loses 2 healing surges; these cannot be recovered until the character improves.
v
Final State: Whenever the character is first bloodied, he immediately falls prone. He cannot run or charge, and if he spends a move action to walk he falls prone again at the end of his turn (save ends)

Well done! I think injury tracks like the disease tracks already given are an excellent idea - not to all players tastes mind you but heh. In terms of the narrative of the game, it would fill a gap that is there as my previous little scenario tried to demonstrate. Thank you very much for the detailed input.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise